Re: Definable operators

Tony Finch <fanf@lspace.org>
23 Mar 1997 23:24:46 -0500

          From comp.compilers
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[31 later articles]
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From: Tony Finch <fanf@lspace.org>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers,comp.lang.misc
Date: 23 Mar 1997 23:24:46 -0500
Organization: Coll: SS. et Indiv: Trin: Cant:
References: 97-03-037 97-03-112 97-03-115 97-03-141
Keywords: syntax, design

Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu> wrote:
>I heard an interesting rule of thumb recently -- although my leaky
>memory is now refusing to tell me who said it -- to the effect that
>operator overloading works very well so long as the data objects are
>*numbers* of some sort, or very close analogs of numbers, and very
>poorly otherwise. I think there's a lot of truth in that.


There are a lot of applications of operator overloading in functional
programming that are not related to numbers. Monads are a class of
objects with certain algebraic properties that are used to control
order of execution. These common properties make it desirable to use
the same operators on IO monads and list monads and exception monads.
Overloading is also useful in combinator parsers.


Tony.
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